


The Dying of the Light

by oldandnewfirm



Category: Human Target (TV 2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldandnewfirm/pseuds/oldandnewfirm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  The jobs don’t always end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dying of the Light

Guerrero blinked. The lights came on, or at least it felt that way. Things took shape. A silhouette bathed in orange and gold. A halo of long hair frizzed to hell. Features smudged by shadow. Everything smudged, like the world as filmed by a cameraman with the shakes.  No glasses, he realized. His eyes stung.

“Tell me about him.”

The silhouette. Ames. Speaking through a mouth full of taffy. Sounded like it, anyway. Was she talking to him?

“About who?” He ventured, in case she was. Though he could feel the vibration of the words in his teeth, his voice didn’t reach his ears. The air around them was roaring. It felt like he’d stuck his head in a five hundred degree oven.

“Your son.”

His head was in her lap, he realized distantly. It would explain why breasts filled most of his field of vision. The view was nice. He wasn’t going to complain.

“My son,” he echoed. Dylan. Nine years old now. Third grader. Cub Scout like his dad and yes, Ames, I really was a Boy Scout once. Stop smiling. He plays minor league baseball. Outfield for now, but he’s trying out for pitcher next season. Wants to be an Egyptologist when he grows up because he thinks mummies are cool.  Bright and funny, like his mother. Looks like her too, thank God, because I’m not sure the world is ready for another handsome heartbreaker like me.

He wouldn’t tell her any of that, of course. Even now, even with her, his son was not a topic up for discussion.

“He sounds like a great kid. You must be so proud.”

He closed his eyes. Smiled. Maybe. There was some kind of disconnect between his mind and his muscles. His voice was a wet rasp. “Yeah. He’s the only good thing I ever did.”

The lights came on, but they only gave him a view of the back of his eyelids. Pressure on his face. A broad strip tapering into five distinct points. A hand. Touching him through a comforter, maybe, because he could barely feel it.

“Guerrero?”

Ames’ voice was cracked, frightened. He tried to sit up, but even the thought of it exhausted him. Why couldn’t he open his eyes?

“No, no.” A break where she might have swallowed. “Don’t move.”

“Where are we?” He asked.

“What?”

“Where are we?”

“Outside,” she said. “We just finished a job.”

“Ames.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

The pressure, moving. A million little tugs. Hand in his hair, petting him like a cat.

“Nothing. Just stay still.”

“Ames.”

“You’re okay,” A sniffle. “You’re gonna be fine. Just don’t move, okay?”

He sucked in a breath and promptly let it out as a cough that seemed to displace every organ in his torso. Ames started whispering a stream of urgent, soothing nonsense and petting him faster. Lenny and his rabbit. Her hand trembled.

“How bad is it?” He asked when he’d somewhat recovered.

She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“The guys?”

She answered five seconds late enough for Guerrero to know whatever she said next was going to be bullshit. “I’m not sure.”

“So you’re the lucky one, huh?”

“Don’t say that.”

“I always figured you’d be the first to go.”

“Don’t be an asshole, either.”

He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I’m glad you didn’t, though.”

Silence.

The lights came on. There were thoughts in his head but they were winking out like stars, leaving a big, muzzy blank where his higher brain functions should be. No sensation. Nothing to see. No eyes, for all he knew.

But hearing. That was still going. And what he heard over a dull roar that seemed too big for the world to hold it was the sound of a woman sobbing. It had the rhythm and volume unique to those who had just witnessed fate drive a semi through everything they loved. Guerrero knew his grief. He’d been the cause of a lot of it.

What bothered him this time, though, in the part of his brain that was still spitting sparks in the darkness, was that this broken woman sounded a lot like Ames. And he couldn’t open his eyes to see her, or reach out a hand to comfort her, or even ask her what was wrong.

Suddenly, deliriously, he was afraid.The blankness in his skull was closing in on his last bastion of thought. But it couldn’t no, no, because there were still things he needed to say, to Ames, to Chance, hell even to Winston, and he hated leaving a job half finished. Speaking of— Dylan’s game. He had a game coming up, a big one, and he’d promised he’d be there. He had to tell Ames. She had to go, or Chance had to go, because someone had to be there, someone had to keep an eye on him, and someone had to tell him that no matter what Dylan heard, no matter what anyone thought, he was always, always, _always_ loved—”

“Guerrero?”

Her voice was so choked that he barely recognized his name. He wanted to answer, but his lips wouldn’t move.

Another sob. When she spoke again her voice was so loud that he imagined she’d pressed her lips to his ear.

“I love you,” she said. “I probably should’ve told you before now. But…”

But that isn’t the kind of thing you say when you’re dating a paranoid assassin who sorts the world into targets and liabilities, and who would’ve bolted like a spooked horse at the three little words normal couples toss back and forth every day.

He inhaled, though he was almost certain he imagined doing so. The sparks were fading. There was a pinprick of light in the center of his not-vision. The last hurrah of a dying brain or the tunnel that would take him straight to hell depending on which school of thought you prescribed to. He found he didn’t much care either way.

He grasped at his last thread of thought and felt it unraveling. What did it matter? But…no. There was an image in his head. A woman. Long, dark hair. Bright eyes. The kind of smile that had the irritating habit of making you happy in spite of yourself. She’d told him something important. Something that deserved an answer, even if it was too late for the both of them.

“I…”


End file.
